Viable Control of Hybrid Systems

We study hybrid systems with nondeterministic discrete and continuous behaviors. We use nondeterministic finite automata to model the discrete behavior and state dependent differential inclusions to model the continuous behavior. By viability we mean the system's ability to take an infinite number of discrete transitions. Viability can be used to express safety and fairness properties over the system's state trajectories. To ensure viability, the system's evolution must be restricted so that discrete transitions occur within specific subsets of their enabling conditions which we call the system's viability kernel. We give results pertaining to continuity properties of the viability kernel, we give conditions under which the viability kernel can be computed in a finite number of steps, and we synthesize a hybrid controller that yields all viable trajectories.